Heartbeat Detector

A very long, very peculiar, very pretentious French film that melds a stinging portrait of modern corporate life with a strange postmodernist take on the terrible legacy of the Holocaust, director Nicolas Klotz's Heartbeat Detector stars Mathieu Amalric (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) as Simon, chief psychologist for the Paris office of a multinational chemical firm. Asked by the company's German owners to assess the mental state of the local CEO (whose conduct has become erratic), Simon uncovers evidence tying corporate executives to crimes and genetic research from the Nazi era. Simon's quest not only exacerbates his own tendency towards personal behavior that is reckless and potentially self-destructive, but also forces him to reexamine his beliefs. All of this is connected (in a fashion typical of airy French intellectualism) to supposedly profound ideas about the power of music and the increasing aridity of language (including lengthy scenes pontificating about how words have become debased, evidenced by the same bureaucratic jargon being employed by both fascist mass murderers and corporate efficiency experts). Heartbeat Detector wants to say something about our dehumanized modern culture, but the film's lethargic, elliptical style makes for tough going, and the comparison of Hitler's Final Solution to business practices that treat employees as expendable seems not just forced but crass. Not recommended. (F. Swietek)